The Ip Man films have never pretended to be biopics about the life of Bruce Lee's master, for good reasons.
Ip Man
- The film portrays Ip Man as a rich bourgeois who dedicates himself to kung fu, which is only half of the story. While the real Ip Man indeed had some level of wealth, he actually kept a job as a police officer during his time in Foshan (which would make the character of Li Chiu a Decomposite Character of the real Ip Man). Another departure is his refusal to accept students, as by this time the real Ip Man already had multiple students among his friends, relatives and subordinates in the police department.
- The plot point of Ip Man losing his wealth to the Imperial Japanese Army and being forced to work in a coal mine is entirely fictional. In real life, Ip Man moved quickly away from Foshan due to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, so he didn't directly suffer its effects like many of his fellow countrymen, and didn't return until the end of the conflict.
- In the film, Ip Man ends up becoming a resistance leader who trains the Foshan villagers and leads them against the Japanese invaders. This is another complete fabrication, as Ip Man fled Foshan as said above and therefore was not present there during the Japanese occupation. The real Ip was a member of the Kuomintang and gained a colonel rank at some point before 1949, but it's unknown whether he actually had any significant military participation against the Japanese. There are rumors that he worked as an intelligence agent during the occupation, but his son Ip Chun has consistently denied them.
- The film makes it clear that Ip Man has nothing to do with the Japanese, when in real life he had studied for a time in Kobe, Hyogo.
- In the film, the Imperial Japanese Army seems to have Karate as their standard hand-to-hand fighting style, with Miura even calling it their national martial art. Historically, karate wasn't really mainstream in Japan by this point, and it was certainly not the Japanese fighting art by excellence. While it was known there from the 1920s and officially recognized by its government in 1933, karate was considered a sort of foreign curiosity, as it came from Okinawa and contained Chinese roots, to the point its main popularizer Gichin Funakoshi had been forced to alter the art's name (from "Chinese hand" to the homophone "empty hand") for it to be better received by the imperial society. The Imperial Japanese army actually favored Judo and other jujutsu styles, which were seen as truly Japanese by comparison.
- In real life, Foshan was taken relatively quickly by the Japanese 21st Army and was inconsequential to the general invasion. It would have been the least likely province to suddenly mount an effective revolt against the Japanese rule.
Ip Man 2
- The second film features Ip Man escaping to Hong Kong in the mid-1940s to flee from the Japanese. In real life, he moved there in 1950 to flee from the Chinese Communist Party, who had just won the Chinese Civil War and was targeting Kuomintang members like Ip himself. In fact, his political alignment is never touched upon in the film series, probably because the truth would certainly not have been palatable for the current day Chinese Communist Party.
- In real life, Ip Man and his wife Cheung Wing-sing were accidentally separated in 1951 due to the closure of borders between China and Hong Kong, and they effectively never saw each other again in their lives. In the film series, she remains to his side through their life until her death. Conversely, the real life Ip Man had a mistress from Shanghai who conceived an illegitimate son, Ip Siu-wah, none of which happens in the films.
- Ip Ching was born in 1936, not in the mid-1940s as shown in the film. By this point, Ip Man also had two daughters that are absent from the films.
- While it is real that Ip Man and his students had many a war of Rival Dojos in Hong Kong, as it was the custom at the time, he didn't face any opposition from other masters to establish his school as it happens in the film, at least that we know. The story about corrupt British authorities and a boxing challenger are also apocryphal, as Ip wasn't especially known as a personal challenge fighter himself. (He disdained western boxing, though, and was particularly opposed to fighting with gloves.)
- Ip Man seemingly needs an English-Chinese interpreter for his boxing match, though the real Ip Man already knew English, having attended St Stephen's College
in Hong Kong. The fourth film did portray Ip as knowing English, though.
Ip Man 3
- Bruce Lee did become a student of Ip Man in Hong Kong, but this happened c. 1956, while this film places it in 1959.
- The story behind the beginning of Ip and Lee's relationship is completely different too. In the film, their first encounters are tense due to Lee's arrogant personality, and Ip only accepts him as a student in exchange for Lee, a cha-cha dancer, to teach him to dance with his dying wife Cheung to enjoy their last days together. In real life, as mentioned above, Cheung was living in China at that point, so Ip Man, who had a new mistress, wasn't at her side when she died. Ip's real beef with Lee was actually Lee's mixed heritage (he was one-quarter Caucasian from his mother's side), for which Ip refused to welcome him into his school until his student William Cheung convinced him. Even after Lee joined his school, the other students refused to train with him out of similar racism, so Bruce ended up having mostly private lessons with Ip, Cheung and Wong Shun Leung. (The bit about Lee being a cha-cha dancer is true though.)
Ip Man 4
- The whole film's premise is an artistic license, as in real life Ip Man never set foot on United States.
- The film portrays Lee clashing against the San Francisco kung fu community over his willingness to teach to non-Chinese people, a conflict so ingrained in pop culture that might be difficult to dispute. In reality, and contrary to the claims contained in his biography by Linda Lee (itself a controversial source), the root of the clash were rather Lee's open challenges and criticisms of the local masters' traditional martial approaches, which caused him to be seen as a troublemaker. Lee was not even the only master to have non-Chinese students and the majority of his own were Chinese anyway.
- Ip Man's strained relationship with his son was due to a dispute over his Shanghai mistress and illegitimate son mentioned above rather than Cheung Wing-sing's death.
- The character of Billy, Bruce Lee's black second-in-command, is a Suspiciously Similar Substitute of Jesse Glover, an African-American judoka who became Lee's first student ever.
- Lee's gym showcases the Jeet Kune Do logo, which in real life would not be adopted until years after the time the film is set in.
- In the movie, the Chinese Benevolent Association is shown to welcome recent Chinese immigrants, including undocumented ones, which becomes a plot point when the police raid them for this reason. In reality, the Association opposed excessive Chinese immigration, as they believed it causing hostility toward Chinese and lowering of wages for both whites and Chinese in America. This policy persisted at very least until 1968, four years after the film's in-universe time and place.
- Ip Man dies from laryngeal cancer as a result of excessive smoking, but the film series forgets to mention that he didn't smoke tobacco only. By the years between Ip Man 4 and the man's death, he endured deep economical troubles due to a supposedly excessive usage of opium, which motivated him to found an entire Wing Chun federation only to recover his gainings. One of his students, Duncan Leung, claimed that Ip even stole tuition money to fund his addiction.
